Well, yesterday was Thursday, and Thursday was an adventure.
How many times to you say "Yeah, I'll stop by sometime" knowing that you never will?
How many times have you thought, "Wow, I really want to go check that place out", and never put the energy into planning it?
For now the furnace is running and I am rooted to the shop. It was time for a day adventure. It was time to do!
Cody, Maddie and I left Jaffrey, NH at 8 am.
Our first stop ((well our first real stop that wasn't a pee break, for food, a pee break, for coffee, or a pee breaks)) was to Luke Adams Glass. Now of course I didn't take any pictures for ya'll, but let go do some Googling ....
Now, you have all seen his stuff everywhere - pumpkins, starfish, etc. They also offer classes and as well as unique high-end pieces.
Today they were making starfish, which was cool to watch. OK, so let me back up and paint a picture of the studio. I know that this is a very good studio and very well represented all over New England, I have no idea what to expect. The gallery is full of beautiful stuff, but in the size department, it is slightly dinky. Then you peak into the back room, and its huge and stocked. Makes perfect sense right - they do production to be sold elsewhere.
The shop was nice too, from what I could tell there are two holes. The one that was hot had the pipe warmer coming off of the size - all attached. Very cool idea. They also had this nice stadium seating style rack for holding all of the color trays - under the hood. Killer idea. I think the most impressive part of that shop was most definitely the annealers. HUGE. I sat there staring at them, trying to imagine the biggest realistic piece that I could make. I could not max out that annealer *drools*
Well, like I said - today they were making starfish like you see above. The gaffer was near the safe audience area, so we got to speak to him a little. His name is Dylan and with his assistant (didn't get close enough to be able to talk to her), together they will make around 300 starfish a day.
Our next stop was sandwiches, but then we were off to Fiamma Glass. Of course Jocelyn probably told me exactly what time she was going to be around the studio yesterday, but I really just have not been on my game.
((Any friends that know really me and are reading this are probably completely shocked. I know, I know, I'm not perfect))
So, we creeped in the window, for a long, long time. First of all, I am obsessed with goblets. I really think they are the hardest things to do. Which makes me want to do them. If you can make a straight goblet, you are respected. Well, there was a sweet goblet. There was also an example of Trina's mice and a bunny. They just really do great work. Once more, I'm going to google you some picture examples.
Now, I think Fiamma Glass is also cool because they are young, amazing artists, making it in the world. It is a couple that went to Mass Art and studied glass. They opened their studio together, just got married, and seem to be living an amazing life. My understanding is that their business model for the studio is very similar to mine - teach glass lessons. They teach a bunch of lessons on the torch. They also seem to do production work, and amazing custom fun pieces, like you see above.
We then had some time to kill before our next "appointment", so we drove over to Green Side Up Gallery in Alston. Of course, parking was a nightmare, so we got a bit of a tour through the one-ways. Eventually, we made it. We go to a lot of festivals, as vendors or just plain old attendees, and we see Green Side Up at almost every single one. It was time to check out one of their real locations! There was a bunch of unique Boro glass artwork in there, we had a grand old time checking it all out. There was also a very pretty soft glass owl sculpture, which made me want to try that again sometime soon.
I'm going to break off from this for a minute and discuss my position on glass pipes, because it is a topic that many feel strongly about (either positive or negative).
Speaking about negative, I often feel bad for pipe-makers, the lack of respect that they receive. When I am discussing my work, I see the light in people's faces change when they realize I do art glass, rather than that 'degenerate art'. Honestly, I work hard to make the distinction very clear.
But, in no way can I say I don't respect pipe-makers. Even to do the most basic production spoon run - it takes a firm set of skills, a huge investment in glass, tools, and equipment, and a strong sense of business. I most certainly like observing the efficiency in production.
My favorite work are "heady" glass pipes. The pipes that you don't even realize are a smoking device, you're too flabbergasted at the beautiful piece of art in front of you. That was our next adventure, to the Joy Street Studios in Somerville. We were greeted by Cristian who was nice enough to give us a quick, but detailed tour of the place. Super cool fun fact, Pawblo Picasso, who I vending next to at Camp Coldbrook has her studio space there ((small happy world)).
So, this is an example of some of Cristian's high-end work. I'm pretty sure this got stolen, maybe its a sore subject example, but LOOK AT IT! SO SWEET.
So he did two sweet demos for us, an ice cube pendant and a cow pipe. The pendant was cool to watch because I can imagine how frustrating it must be to try and make that perfect shape. He even said himself, ice cubes are made in mold, they are perfect. Cristian got a sweet graphite mold made, it was nice to be able to "talk glass" for a while. Also funny fact about his cow spoons, he thinks about countries when he makes the spots, so they don't all look the same. I was just cruising through his pictures to find the above to show you and laughing about what country he was thinking about when he put on certain dots. lol, I'm not sure if he does it all the time, but whatever. It was peaceful being in the studio and watching Cristian in his groove. It is something about the heat and the spinning. I have a great appreciation for spinning skills needed to work on the torch (different than the spinning skills in the hot shop), and I could watch the movements forever.
Everyone was pretty tired after all of this adventuring, so we headed towards home. Our last stop was to our friends at Masspipes. After being so many places, it was nice to be back in a "home zone". We took some time to hangout with Matt, Dylan and Aaron, reflecting on the adventures and getting out of the car a bit. I have lots of respect for the guys at Masspipes - I think we will be longtime glass friends, and maybe you'll be lucky enough to hear more about them another day.
We returned to Jaffrey around 4:30 pm, and the "Boston Area" chapter of our Thursday adventures were over. I will tell you about CT (Mark's house) and Snow Farm later. :)
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